I Remember Oral Roberts
Oral apologized to his wife and asked for her forgiveness. I remember going home and looking at all the bottles, brushes, perfumes and cosmetics that were on my wife’s side of our bathroom countertop, and seeing them for the first time as love songs from the woman that God had given me. I thought of the times I had looked with disfavor on the cost of those items, and then I realized that my wife had spent that money because she wanted to be my attractive darling, and that was far more important than the cost.
A lesson learned late in life, and worth repeating.
I also recall Oral telling the small group of us about the days when he first broadcast his seed faith appeal. Plant a seed in faith, and see what God will grow. That appeal led to an avalanche of mail. Roberts described the post office personnel bringing bags of mail to his offices, so many bags that they had to be reused which meant that the post office people dumped all the contents of those bags on the floor in several rooms. This went on for weeks, and Oral’s staff could not process the mail at the rate it arrived even though they worked late and started early.
One evening when everyone had left except Oral and Evelyn, who were knee deep in unopened envelopes, Oral reached down and scooped as many letters as he could hold between his two hands and threw them up at the ceiling and watched with joy as they floated and fell back to the floor.
He said he felt embarrassed as he related his antics over all those envelopes to us, and then he concluded his remarks by telling us that after they had opened every envelope, counted the contents, sent out receipts and things got back to normal, that he had never experienced such an inflow of money to his ministry before.
As that season in his life ended, Oral recalled sitting at his desk where he realized that the needs represented by letters and calls sitting on his desk were far greater than all the money he had collected.
I remember him saying that he understood at that moment that only a loving God could meet the needs of all the people that knew Oral’s name let alone all the millions who did not.
The Oral Roberts that I got to know was a very ordinary man, and that was the key to his extra-ordinary ministry.
PR
Category: Church History, Summer 2010
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